When I received a call from NY Rock as I was about to leave my job that Monday, the idea of seeing a concert was the last thing on my mind. Not only had I had crappy day of wage-slave drudgery, but I'd also taken the mandatory physical examination for my job that afternoon and was reeling from the embarrassment of a man in a lab coat demanding a urine sample from me, feeling my testicles with his cold, cold hands and putting his latex coated finger on my colon. It all seemed like some bad gay porno, but when I heard that it was a Sonic Youth concert on the first night of their three sold-out shows, I had to jump back and touch myself. I had originally tried to get tickets for the shows when they went on sale, but was stymied by poor finances and procrastination and here I was now getting free tickets to the first night's concert.

I arrived at Irving Plaza and strode up to the box office, giddy as a child bride, claimed my tickets and was inside barely long enough to check my bag, take a wiz and be robbed of $5 for a can of swilly American beer, before Sonic Youth took the stage. Amid the screams and shouts of their adoring public, they began their set with a psychedelic intro whose tripped-out fuzz sounded more like Syd Barrett era Pink Floyd than anything the hybrid punk/noise band might have played when they formed nearly 18 years ago. This opening number – added with the kaleidoscopic designs projected behind them, and the general good-natured vibe in the air – put one in mind of what it must have been like at clubs such as the Fillmore East during the peace, love and acid heyday of 1968.

The band then launched into "Sunday" off of the new album A Thousand Leaves. Building with a beautiful cacophony of distorted guitar thunder, the song stopped on a dime and segued into a heartbeat-like shuffle and the vocal stylings of Thurston Moore. Just as the band – and the crowd – settled into the groove of the song, they suddenly threw the song into reverse and exploded into a five-minute psychedelic freakout. The jam was a roller-coaster ride of distortion, flange, strobe lights and rapid-fire drumming that sounded like an acid-rain storm on a hot tin roof. It had a good beat. I could "bug out to it" and right as the band exhausted every conceivable fret progression and scrambled every possible chord shape known to music, they brought it on home from the brink of destruction with the original metronome waltz that's the song's core.

Material off their new album dominated the evening and though many songs – "Hits of Sunshine (for Allen Ginsberg)" and "Hoarfrost" particularly – were a bit too slow and somber for me, the bizarre riffage of "French Tickler" served as a welcome kick in the pants and a reminder that they still know how to pull off a rock juggernaut when they want to. This song got the crowd moving again and once more the drums were slamming, the bass throbbing and the air crackled with the sound of guitars screaming bloody murder. After several more new tunes ("Wildflower Soul" and "Karen Koltrane" among them) Sonic Youth left the stage before returning for their obligatory encores. They did not disappoint, and their searing rendition of "Death Valley 69" was worth the price of admission in and of itself. (Had I actually been a paying customer, that is.)

The band tore through this cubic zirconia in the rough like a demon lounge act in Hell. Lee Ranaldo and Thurston Moore flailed and scalded their guitars, twisting every metallic note from their strings, while the stage was alternately flooded with strobe lights and painted with psychotically spinning spotlights.

For the ice cream on the cake, the Youth closed with an awe-inspiring feed-back finale that was truly a spectacle worth witnessing. For 15 minutes, Thurston and Lee were locked in a steel-cage match of blissful dissonance as they viscously pawed and mauled their instruments, scratching the pickups against their amps, detuning their strings and grinding their guitars into the ground like shovels digging in search of a groove of distortion. The last man standing at the end of this fuzz fest was Lee Ranaldo, who stood before the crowd like some mad scientist from an old sci-fi movie.

He hovered over the stage, bathed in flashing red lights as he forced every squeal, whistle, snap, crackle and pop out of his guitar that the voltage of Irving Plaza would allow. Sonic Youth brought down the house that Monday with their own unique and unsurpassed brand of gorgeous, atonal noise as I'm sure they would over the next two nights, in what is sure to be a landmark concert series for the band and the New York music scene.